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Jan. 4th, 2010 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3nanashiContacting anyone in the Preventers organization, or even loosely tied to it, is not an option right now. If you're investigating corruption, you don't announce your intentions to the people in question.
That's fine. Trowa likes a challenge.
Still, he's coming into the situation much later than he'd like, to a trail three days cold, and this isn't his home ground. He'd make do entirely on his own if he needed to, but it's going to be quicker to call on some other resources.
Accordingly, on the shuttle to L2, he opens up his Sweeper email, and sends out a few feelers. He's gotten along fine with most of the Sweepers he's met, and he's got a freesky.net account and some common ground with the eccentric network of space-salvagers, but he's not really one of them. But Duo is, and Sweepers fight for their own. They're unaffiliated, and they're Trowa's best allies right now.
Then he settles back to wait, and to mull over approaches and contingency plans. It's a long shuttle ride between L3 and L2, with both Earth and the Moon in between. He might as well use the time.
Besides, planning is a way to distract himself from his half-acknowledged irritation at being a passenger on this kind of flight. The pilot of this shuttle is adequate, though no more; the flight plan is conservative, sacrificing speed for steadiness and predictability; the engines are an old Yasashi model with standard maintenance but no upgrades; at no point do the thrusters burn above 30% power. All of that makes perfect sense for the parameters of civilian commercial flight, but it's hard not to think about what more this shuttle could be capable of.
An hour after he sends the first email, he gets a call. (To a dummy number, of course, but one that redirects through a few more spots and to his machine.)
Trowa slips on earphones -- he'd rather hear the noise around him, but this will keep anyone from overhearing the other side of the conversation if Michael gets loud -- and hits Accept.
Michael Carruthers is large, dark-skinned and grey-haired, and prone to wearing loud Hawaiian shirts thoroughly at odds with his no-nonsense manner. He's also the unofficial leader of the officially leaderless collection of Sweepers scattered around this part of the colony.
Right now, he's hunched over the vidphone on his desk (or somebody's desk, anyway), his big hands braced on the table, attempting to loom forbiddingly at Trowa through the phone. Trowa waits.
"Yeah," Michael grunts finally, "all right. Fair."
He scowls at his desk for a moment, thinking. The annoyance is directed at the situation, not Trowa -- not that Trowa would be bothered if it were, but he'd respond with a slightly different quality of silence.
"You can stay with the Marshalls. They've got a garage a couple of miles from HQ, and a whole lot of cousins. You tell people you're another one if anybody asks. Half of them've got brown hair anyway, you'll fit right in. You need backup, though, you come to me. They don't need dragging into a fight."
"Got it." Michael's not ex-military as such, but he might as well be. He was a busy man back in the Eve Wars.
Michael grunts. "You keep us posted, kid."
"Roger," says Trowa, even though they both know that Trowa will pick and choose what information he shares without consulting Michael about it. A covert operation is always need-to-know, or it's not covert at all. This is the primary reason Michael keeps trying to loom at him. "Thanks."
"Yeah, yeah. Head for Gonzales Street and Washington when you get there. I'll have your brand new cousin meet you."
That's fine. Trowa likes a challenge.
Still, he's coming into the situation much later than he'd like, to a trail three days cold, and this isn't his home ground. He'd make do entirely on his own if he needed to, but it's going to be quicker to call on some other resources.
Accordingly, on the shuttle to L2, he opens up his Sweeper email, and sends out a few feelers. He's gotten along fine with most of the Sweepers he's met, and he's got a freesky.net account and some common ground with the eccentric network of space-salvagers, but he's not really one of them. But Duo is, and Sweepers fight for their own. They're unaffiliated, and they're Trowa's best allies right now.
Then he settles back to wait, and to mull over approaches and contingency plans. It's a long shuttle ride between L3 and L2, with both Earth and the Moon in between. He might as well use the time.
Besides, planning is a way to distract himself from his half-acknowledged irritation at being a passenger on this kind of flight. The pilot of this shuttle is adequate, though no more; the flight plan is conservative, sacrificing speed for steadiness and predictability; the engines are an old Yasashi model with standard maintenance but no upgrades; at no point do the thrusters burn above 30% power. All of that makes perfect sense for the parameters of civilian commercial flight, but it's hard not to think about what more this shuttle could be capable of.
An hour after he sends the first email, he gets a call. (To a dummy number, of course, but one that redirects through a few more spots and to his machine.)
Trowa slips on earphones -- he'd rather hear the noise around him, but this will keep anyone from overhearing the other side of the conversation if Michael gets loud -- and hits Accept.
Michael Carruthers is large, dark-skinned and grey-haired, and prone to wearing loud Hawaiian shirts thoroughly at odds with his no-nonsense manner. He's also the unofficial leader of the officially leaderless collection of Sweepers scattered around this part of the colony.
Right now, he's hunched over the vidphone on his desk (or somebody's desk, anyway), his big hands braced on the table, attempting to loom forbiddingly at Trowa through the phone. Trowa waits.
"Yeah," Michael grunts finally, "all right. Fair."
He scowls at his desk for a moment, thinking. The annoyance is directed at the situation, not Trowa -- not that Trowa would be bothered if it were, but he'd respond with a slightly different quality of silence.
"You can stay with the Marshalls. They've got a garage a couple of miles from HQ, and a whole lot of cousins. You tell people you're another one if anybody asks. Half of them've got brown hair anyway, you'll fit right in. You need backup, though, you come to me. They don't need dragging into a fight."
"Got it." Michael's not ex-military as such, but he might as well be. He was a busy man back in the Eve Wars.
Michael grunts. "You keep us posted, kid."
"Roger," says Trowa, even though they both know that Trowa will pick and choose what information he shares without consulting Michael about it. A covert operation is always need-to-know, or it's not covert at all. This is the primary reason Michael keeps trying to loom at him. "Thanks."
"Yeah, yeah. Head for Gonzales Street and Washington when you get there. I'll have your brand new cousin meet you."
